Abstract:
Some have claimed that people view morality as a matter of objective fact, but this claim was challenged by testing whether people vary in how much they think morality is objective. Thus, the Lay Moral Objectivism Scale (LMOS) was developed with intentions to assess levels of lay moral objectivism. The present study examined the latent factor structure of the LMOS using best practices in exploratory factor analysis (EFA). A sample of 300 people from the United States between 18 and 73 years of age (M = 37.6, SD = 11.99) was collected using Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). A total of three EFA’s were conducted on the data, with item removal after each phase. Next, LMOS latent variables were correlated to other validated scales that measure similar latent constructs. A single-factor model was best supported by the data, indicating that the LMOS represents a strong measure of lay moral objectivism. Scores on the LMOS were correlated appropriately with the other measures, further providing evidence for the validity of the construct.
